Moon Chanpil’s Imaginative Illustrations of People and Animals

Korean artist Moon Chanpil paints imaginative illustrations of people and animals coexisting in a witty, and sometimes unsettling, world. Her bear, tiger, and chimp characters act like silly humans, wearing colorful suits and protesting early mornings. Meanwhile, their human companions take on animal-like roles as they curl up like cats and generally laze about in their underwear. It’s as if the human and animal worlds have switched, as in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, where animals act like people in situations that could never be possible. Chanpil combats the playfulness of her “I Hate Early Birds” series with her more serious portraits. Where she previously presented our link to nature in a comical way, these new images flip it around to capture the raw animalism in people. With magnetizing cat eye-like stares, they gaze directly at the viewer like a predator ready to pounce or shivering prey. In both sides of her work, we can feel a natural identity with the characters that Moon Chanpil has created.